AACS license finalized; managed copy coming to Blu-ray

After years of promising the feature, the finalization of the AACS licensing …

The finalization of the licensing agreement for the Advanced Access Content System DRM scheme used for Blu-ray discs comes with an analog sunset, and also means the long-promised "managed copy" feature will (hopefully) be coming as early as next year.

The managed copy feature is designed to allow an owner to make at least one full-resolution backup copy of AACS-protected content. It has been a mandatory part of the Blu-ray specification since 2005, and we were told that support was coming by the end of 2007. Of course, that was contingent on the finalized AACS licensing agreement, which was just published earlier this month. AACS licensees have until the end of this year to sign the agreement, and due to a number of factors support won't likely be available until sometime early next year.

Among those issues is the fact that current Blu-ray hardware doesn't support managed copy, and most likely can't be enabled by a firmware upgrade, so it will mean at a minimum a hardware upgrade for users to take advantage of the feature. Also, capable Blu-ray devices will have to be able to connect to an authorization server to track whether a managed copy has been made, or if the number of copies made has reached the allowable limit. Those servers aren't expected to be online until sometime in the first quarter of 2010. And finally, content providers have to encode a URL to the necessary authorization server when mastering the disc.

"We think that consumers really do want the ability to use their content flexibly," AACS-LA chair Michael Ayers told Video Business. It's almost an insult to obviousness to say that Ayers is stating the obvious. DVD ripping software, home theater PCs, and place-shifting devices like the Slingbox are all ample evidence of that.

But managed copy comes with its own nest of problems for consumers. While AACS licensees are required to enable managed copy capabilities into all newly produced discs, there is no way to enable it for discs consumers already own. And there is actually no requirement for new hardware to support the feature, though Andy Parsons, US chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee and senior vice president of product planning at Pioneer Home Entertainment thinks consumer demand will compel device manufacturers to include the feature.

Furthermore, content providers are only required to allow a user to make one copy. Studios can, at their discretion, enable more copies, but they can also charge for each copy, even the one required allowable backup copy. Any backup copies made are required to have DRM on them. And the only formats currently allowable are an AACS-encrypted Blu-ray disc, a CSS-encrypted DVD, and/or a WindowsMedia DRM-encrypted digital file.

One thing that the managed copy system does not seem to address is what happens if the original disc becomes damaged, and your backup is your only copy? It doesn't appear that a user will be able to back up the backup. In the case of a physical disc copy, it leaves the user right back at square one: she hopes the original never deteriorates or gets damaged (we've all got enough experience with optical discs to know how that goes) or she'll have to go right back to using disc-ripping software.

As far as users of non-WindowsMedia devices are concerned, Ayers seems to hope that Apple will file an application to join in the AACS licensing fun and make FairPlay-protected, iTunes-compatible files available as an option, but we're not holding our breath on that one. As a result, the millions of iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and even AppleTV users will be tempted to use ripping software or peer-to-peer networks to get digital copies to use the way they want to. You can count on the small yet significant minority of Linux users doing the same as well.

So, managed copy is finally coming, if just a few years late, and, as is always the case with DRM, it will also end up being a few notches short of consumer expectations.